After having trading markets today closed for trading on Good Friday, stocks and precious metals are facing big tests on Monday and the Following Week. For the Dow, Must maintain and push a little higher over 8000 and extend the secondary Elliot Wave Rally. If it does next real test will be 8500 for the Dow. If it fails here and closses back beneath 8000 then lookout for a swan dive! For Gold and Precious Metals, Gold must maintain and close above the $880-$890 level. To confirm botttom in place from the retracement a close over $920 will be required. A close beneath $860 and we’ll see a definite test of $850. Personally with all that is happening, I would much rather be in Precious Metals than Stocks at this moment. Today’s articles feature Peter Schiff, Brad Zigler, Peter Cooper and Adrian Ash

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Amid an “inflationary depression” in the U.S., Peter Schiff, president and chief global strategist of Euro Pacific Capital, sees opportunities in the maelstrom. Facing a massive redistribution of wealth, he advises investors to act quickly and “divest U.S. dollar assets into physical precious metals, other currencies and equities outside the United States.” In this exclusive interview with The Gold Report, the widely-quoted expert on money, economic theory and international investing discusses what led up to our current “phony economy” and how investors can actually profit from the crisis.

The Gold Report: Peter, you were one of few people to predict financial crisis that the U.S. and the world is now in the midst of. At a recent conference, you called the conditions that we’re facing “an inflationary depression.” Can you describe what you mean by that?

Peter Schiff: Well, basically, that is the condition that the government is creating here in the United States, and an inflationary depression is going to be a protracted period of economic decline accompanied by rapid increases in consumer prices. So, it’s going to be something like the stagflation of the 1970s, only much more stagnation, or outright contraction of the economy, with the cost of living increasing even more rapidly than it did then.

TGR: As we look at some of the things that Obama’s trying to put into place, is there anything the government could do now to avoid this?

PS: There’s nothing the government can do to avoid some serious short-term pain. The country is in a lot of trouble because of all of the monetary mismanagement of the past, the reckless government spending and the money creation that led to the phony economy.

We’ve spent a long time squandering wealth in this country. We’ve borrowed a lot of money and foolishly used it to consume. We’ve allowed our industrial base to disintegrate, and it’s going to be difficult to rebuild a viable economy. But we’re never going to rebuild one if the government stands in the way. What the government is doing now with their polices is trying to reflate the bubble; they’re trying to get Americans to borrow and spend even more money when we’re broke from the money that we shouldn’t have borrowed and spent in the first place. And the government is trying to get itself bigger. The government is trying to grow its size at a time when it needs to contract because we’re really too broke to afford a bloated government.

It was bad in the past—it was making us less competitive, but at least we could afford it; now we clearly can’t. So, we need less government. We need sound monetary policy. We need higher interest rates. We need to allow businesses to fail. We need to allow companies to go out of business or bankrupt. We need to allow foreclosures to take place. We need to allow people to lose certain jobs. We can’t try and interfere with that. And to the extent that we do, we’re going to create this depression; and if we keep printing money, we’re going to have massive inflation on top of it.

TGR: In your talks, you’ve said that printing money will cause massive inflation and the collapse of the U.S. dollar. Can you speak to that?

PS: People think you just create money and use it to spend. But when you create money you don’t create purchasing power. So, what happens is you have to pay more money; you create inflation. The way you get increased purchasing power is through increased production, and simply printing money doesn’t cause factories to appear. It doesn’t cause consumer goods to appear.

In order to have real increased consumption, we need to produce more, which means we need more savings and investment—and the government is discouraging that with its policy, not promoting it.

TGR: Will the government bailouts help increase production and ultimately purchasing power?

PS: No, no, the bailouts are destructive to the economy because the government is bailing out industries and companies that should be failing. They’re keeping nonproductive companies in business, which ultimately undermines the competitiveness and the productivity of our economy.

Bankruptcy is like when a body has an infection. It fights it off, and that’s what the free market is doing by trying to kill off noncompetitive companies. Bankruptcy is a positive force in an economy. Maybe it’s not positive for the entity going bankrupt, but it is positive for the economy as a whole because it’s purging from the body of the economy nonviable companies that are squandering our resources.

We need companies to fail so that more prosperous companies can succeed. By keeping certain businesses around, the government is preventing others from coming into existence that would have been more productive.

TGR: So, if the government would step back and let the free market systems work, how much sooner would they be able to make the turnaround, rather than having the government do it?

PS: We’re not going to turn around at all as a result of what the government is doing. We’d turn around a lot sooner if they would let free market systems work, but it wouldn’t be instantaneous. We’ve got to dismantle the phony economy before we can rebuild the viable economy. We’re going to have this transitionary pain. We have to get over all the damage that has already been done in response to the government and bad monetary fiscal policy. We had a bubble economy; we had an economy based on Americans spending money they didn’t have and buying products they couldn’t afford or that they didn’t make. We had an economy built on debt, consumer debt, and financial engineering, and our companies were generating profits from accounting rather than from production. And the whole thing was phony; the prosperity was phony. We need to address those problems, and get back on the road to economic viability.

TGR: Is this a U.S. phenomenon or is this worldwide?

PS: Well, it exists to lesser degrees in other countries, and certainly other countries are affected because they’re producing the goods that we’re consuming and they’re lending us the money to pay for it and, ultimately, we can’t pay them back. And so their economies are going to suffer as a result of all the wealth that has been squandered and all the resources that have been wasted on production for American consumers because we can’t afford to pay.

TGR: The government is printing money. What is going to be the impact of all that money coming into the economy?

PS: Well, it’s going to force up prices. Eventually real estate prices will start to rise, stock prices will start to rise; but Americans aren’t going to be richer because the cost of living is going to rise a lot faster. The price of food and the price of energy are going to rise much faster than the price of stocks or real estate.

TGR: Do you see a pending collapse in the U.S. dollar?

PS: I do see a collapse in the dollar. The dollar is already been losing value, but I think it’s going to lose a lot more.

TGR: What should investors be looking at as a safe haven for the money that they have now?

PS: Well, they should be looking at the traditional safe havens like gold and silver; they should also be looking at other commodities and at investments outside the United States. There are a lot of opportunities around the world. There are a lot of stocks that are extremely inexpensive, in my opinion, particularly in the Asian markets and the natural resource space.

There are a lot of stocks trading at valuations I have never seen; there’s a lot of pessimism built into the global markets right now, and there are fire sale prices. The world has overreacted to our problems and the way our problems have affected their economies. And in this market environment of de-leveraging and asset liquidation, prudent investors who do have cash can find tremendous bargains around the world. They can preserve their wealth and actually profit from what’s going on.

TGR: Can you share with us some sectors people might consider?

PS: In general, the productive sectors of the economy have companies that are manufacturing products and have good balance sheets, companies that operate within a resource sector that has tremendous reserves—whether it’s mining reserves or energy reserves—or companies that operate in various forms of agriculture. There are great opportunities there. Stocks are trading for very low, single-digit multiples off of depressed earnings. And you have a lot of companies offering dividend yields north of 10%, and these are real dividends paid from earnings. But, as an investor, you have to do your homework to find them. Bond rates are so low we can get incredible yields on equities, and this is a great opportunity, especially if those yields are going to be paid to us in currencies that I expect to strengthen significantly against the U.S. dollar.

TGR: What countries and currencies do you see emerging first from the recession?

PS: Well, ultimately, a lot of the currencies that are currently pegged to the U.S. dollar will be very strong, a lot of the Asian currencies. We already see a lot of the resource currencies starting to move back. We have seen rather substantial strength in the Australian and the New Zealand dollars in the past few weeks. I do think you’re going to see strength also in the Euro, as the Euro seems to be a good alternative to the dollar as far as a reserve-type currency. And the Europeans’ monetary policy is not nearly as bad as ours, so more of that type money will be attracted to the Euro and will probably benefit other Euro-zone type currencies—Scandinavian currencies, the Swiss Franc—those currencies will benefit, as well.

TGR: China and Russia and some other OPEC nations are calling for the IMF to come in with an international currency. I think they’re calling it special drawing rights.

PS: Yes, China was talking about trying to look for alternative reserve currencies to the dollar, and they’re floating a balloon of special drawing rights issued by the IMF. I don’t think that’s a good idea. Ultimately, China does indeed need to convince the world to look for another standard. China needs to find another reserve on its own and it can do that. The Chinese should start divesting U.S. dollars now. They can choose any currency they want as their reserve currency. When they do start divesting dollars it will impact the value of the dollar.

TGR: Will we see a return to a gold standard?

PS: Currencies need to have value and paper is not value. No fiat currency in history has ever survived. Everyone says this one is going fine but we’ve only been off the gold standard since 1971—it’s too soon to tell, but it’s sure not looking good.

TGR: Will you see a return to the gold standard in your lifetime?

PS: Yes, I will—it has to happen.

TGR: What investment advice do you have for our readers?

PS: Investors need to act quickly and take charge of their financial destiny. We’re facing the largest redistribution of wealth through inflation.

The hardest hit will be the savers and investors who will see their savings wiped out if they are kept in U.S. dollars. Dollars will be stolen from the savers to pay for these huge government-spending policies—for health care, education and the bailout.

I would divest U.S. dollar assets into physical precious metals, other currencies and equities outside the United States, and focus on companies that own real things that have a demand.

Peter Schiff is President & Chief Global Strategist of Euro Pacific Capital in Darien, CT. Mr. Schiff began his investment career as a financial consultant with Shearson Lehman Brothers, after having earned a degree in finance and accounting from U.C. Berkeley in 1987. A widely-quoted expert on money, economic theory, and international investing, Peter has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, L.A. Times, Barron’s, Business Week, Time and Fortune. His broadcast credits include regular guest appearances on CNBC, Fox Business, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News Channel. He also served as an economic advisor to the 2008 Ron Paul presidential campaign. His best-selling book, “Crash Proof: How to Profit from the Coming Economic Collapse” was published by Wiley & Sons in February of 2007. His second book, “The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets: How to Keep your Portfolio Up When the Market is Down” was published by Wiley & Sons in October of 2008.

There’s a continuous – no, let me rephrase that – there’s an unending battle over the merits of technical analysis among traders. Those who forecast price trends using market fundamentals often think chartists are using the equivalent of chicken entrails to predict a commodity’s future.

I’m not going to step into the line of fire in this battle.

Suffice it to say that a market in which fundamentals are – how shall I put it? – screwy, technical analysis may provide the only reliable road map.

Take gold, for example. There are lots of reasons the price of the metal “should” be higher if one looks solely at the fundamentals. But there are forces holding the metal’s price in check.

Readers of this column know at least one chart is usually published with each day’s offering (today will be no different). Many of those charts, however, track fundamental elements of supply and demand. We figure there are benefits and drawbacks to both styles of analysis. For those times when fundamentals are murky, you must refrain from making market moves or try to glean insight from the charts. Obviously, some traders have to be in the market. Market makers, for instance.

Gold’s chart indicates that some serious technical damage has been inflicted in recent days. Just this week, we mentioned increased odds that the metal’s 100-day moving average would be tested (see “Gold’s Price Decline Brings Out Buyers“). That test is nigh, but the support previously provided at the nearby contract’s March low of $888 has now turned to overhead resistance.

COMEX Nearby Gold

Gold bears have the technical edge over the near term. They have the January low of $808 in sight, but need a spot close today under $874 to really grease the skids. April COMEX gold has weakened today, but has so far recovered from a dip to the $874 level.

Now, on the fundamental side are the clues offered by the London forward market. Three-month leases are down to 10 basis points (0.10%), brought low, however, more by an easing in LIBOR than in a nudging up of the metal’s forward rate. Still, the implication to be drawn is that there’s plenty of gold liquidity among commercial dealers, at least in the critical three-month lease segment.

For gold bulls, a close above $919 in the spot market is needed to marshal strength for an assault on the $956 resistance bump.

Precious metal fans face a conundrum in choosing to buy silver rather than gold: silver prices are more volatile but have always outperformed gold prices in previous financial crises.

So you might sleep better as an investor in gold but ultimately lose out to silver. An equal split asset allocation is one way of hedging sleep and performance.

It is notable, for example, that the correction in silver prices since the peak of March 2008 has been larger than gold. Silver more than halved before rebounding while gold lost a third in price before coming back.

Looking forward

Then again if you had bought at the bottom point for both metals over the past year gold is now much closer to its March 2008 peak price than silver, and you would have made more money. What to do going forward?

The gold-to-silver price ratio is now 70 compared with a range of 30-100 over the past three decades, although it has been as low as 15 during periods when silver was used as money.

Given that currency competitive devaluations and inflation are the likely drivers of higher precious metal prices over the next few years that would seem to give the advantage to silver. It does tend to become a ‘poor man’s gold’ as gold prices rise, and in India there is already some evidence of this happening.

The real test for gold and silver will come in the next down leg of this bear stock market towards a capitulation phase. Will those finally giving up on equities shift their money into precious metals if they fear inflation is about to hit bonds?

Judgment call

It is possible, or there might be an intermediate phase in which gold and silver are temporarily sold down in a market crash – like last autumn – and only later find their role as a bond replacement.

However, history suggests silver will be the better performer, and stocks of silver are reckoned to be less than one-hundredth the size of gold reserves, so the supply and demand equation is already stacked in favor of silver. Monetize gold and silver and there will not be enough silver available and the price will go up.

There is a risk that gold and silver prices will fall as equity markets fall, or even a risk that foolish investors might send the stock market rally a little higher, but probably the biggest risk is being caught short of both precious metals when prices take off.

“INVESTORS will drive the next leg of this bull market in gold,” said Philip Klapwijk, chairman of GFMS, at the London-based research consultancy’s Gold Survey launch in Canary Wharf on Tuesday, “setting a new high above $1,000 in 2009 and with a real possibility of $1,100 per ounce.”

Anyone pitching for $1,100 in short order, however, might have their work cut out for them. And all thanks to MC Hammer.

“We have seen people in Europe Buying Gold in quantities more typical of the Middle East and Asia…particularly in Germany and Switzerland,” Klapwijk went on. Because “Inflation is the inevitable consequence of today’s rapid money-supply growth and quantitative easing.” All told, reckons GFMS, the monetary response to the financial crisis will prove “extremely powerful medicine for Gold Investment.”

So far, so bullish. But why no new high, therefore, in the gold price already this year? Philip Klapwijk attributes gold’s failure at $1,000 back in February to the “astounding” flow of scrap metal coming from cash-strapped consumers worldwide. And GFMS’s raw numbers would suggest he’s right.

Scrap supplies previously lagged both gold-mining output and central-bank sales by a wide margin each year. But recycled tonnage actually overtook new jewelry demand worldwide at the start of 2009 according to GFMS’s analysis. That was after rising 27% in full-year 2008 to more than 1,200 tonnes.

Gold mining output, for comparison, came in at barely 2,500 tonnes, down yet again year-on-year despite the on-going rise in prices.

Come Q1 2009 and scrap supply surged further still, reaching above a massive 500 tonnes according to GFMS’s research. New jewelry demand, in contrast, halved to just 420 tonnes, as traditional importers – such as former world No.2 Turkey – became gold exporters in a shocking about-turn.

One attendee at the GFMS presentation even thought they under-played it, putting the flow of scrap metal far higher – and dwarfing world mining output – at perhaps 1,000 tonnes during the first quarter alone. Absurd as that sounds, world No.1 importer India took in next-to-no new gold at all between Jan. and March as the Bombay Bullion Association has reported.

That’s an event not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s according to gold-market historian Timothy Green, also chipping into the Q&A at Tuesday’s GFMS presentation.

Most crucially for the new dynamic of gold demand-and-supply, the industrialized West has seen high-margin operations led by Cash4Gold – whose advert during this year’s Superbowl hardly needs spoofing, featuring as it did MC Hammer and former Tonight Show sidekick Ed MacMahon spoofing themselves – make selling gold much easier for cash-strapped consumers.

“I can get cash for this gold medallion of me wearing a gold medallion!” gasped the Hammer in Cash4Gold’s typically gag-laden Superbowl slot. The airtime alone reputedly cost $3 million, so based on the scrap market’s average mark-up of 40% – if not the 60% to 80% mark-ups reported in this “consumer crusade” against America’s No.1 – you’d have to guess they brought in a chunk of change…as did everyone else touting for scrap metal as the Christmas heating bills came due between Jan. and March.

Hence the “roadblock”, or so Klapwijk reckons, on gold breaking above $1,000 an ounce in late February. But we’re not so sure here at BullionVault.

First, Cash4Gold’s parent company, Albar Precious Metals, reports 775% growth for the last three years. So why the sudden impact on gold prices – an impact regularly dismissed in 2008 in favor of de-leveraged by crisis-hit hedge funds fleeing the futures and options market? More crucially, back in Feb. this year, gold still broke new all-time highs vs. the Euro, Sterling, Swiss Franc, Indian Rupee, Turkish Lira and pretty much everything else bar the Dollar and Yen. Which would suggest the failure at $1,000 was more currency-capped than supply-driven.

More critically still for gold-market analysts, how can we draw a line between “investment” and “jewelry” for those two billion Asians still without Main Street banks in which to keep their savings?

Either way, gold investors might still want to beware the Hammer. Because the only cap on Middle Eastern gold sales after the Jan. 1980 top, as Timothy Green recalled from his experience in Kuwait and Dubai, was the inability of jewelers to raise enough cash each day to buy all the scrap gold offered daily. Whereas Cash4Gold, the leading US scrap buyer, also runs its own refineries as well as collecting scrap metal by post and touting for metal online and on TV.

Looking ahead, an estimated 82,000 tonnes of gold exists as privately-owned jewelry worldwide, some 52% of the total above-ground supply. The vast bulk of recent tonnage has been added by emerging-market consumers, most often in the form of lumpy “investment jewelry” that carries little added-value from fabrication, but which can still lose 10-15% in dealing fees when it’s sold to raise cash. So how much of the 2008 and early-09 supply represented forced sales by truly cash-strapped gold hoarders – and how much represented “easy scrap” sales? You know, the really ugly old-fashioned stuff inherited from maiden aunts that the owners never much cared for, similar to that “rabbit gold” buried by generations of Frenchmen fearing (yet another) German invasion but now dishoarded by their grandchildren each year.

In the same way the earth yields up “easy gold” to open-cast mines, before forcing miners to start digging…and digging…down as far as four and even five kilometers below the surface in South Africa, the world’s former No.1 gold-mining nation…perhaps the emerging markets are now racing through their “easy scrap” gold. Or perhaps the decision to sell has already been tough, “spurred by losing your job, losing money in the stock market, bad luck, or just needing some extra cash for holiday spending,” as Cash4Gold laments on its website.

On the other side of the trade, meantime, GFMS now expects “concentrated buying” on any price dip to $800-850 per ounce. Down there, the consultancy says, pent-up demand will surge while scrap sales fall sharply, just as we’ve seen right throughout this bull market to date, with Indian jewelry demand triggered at ever-higher dips in the price.

And as Philip Klapwijk noted in London on Tuesday, if it weren’t for a surprise jump in gold-jewelry demand during the plunge to $700 an ounce and below in Oct. 2008, “it’s undoubtable that gold would have fallen further…down to $650 or lower.”

Everyone’s got their “deal price” in short – that level at which they’re either a buyer or seller, depending on where they last bought or sold. And also depending, of course, on their outlook for inflation from here.

Formerly City correspondent for The Daily Reckoning in London and head of editorial at the UK’s leading financial advisory for private investors, Adrian Ash is the editor of Gold Newsand head of research at BullionVault – where you can Buy Gold Today vaulted in Zurich on $3 spreads and 0.8% dealing fees.

(c) BullionVault 2009

Please Note: This article is to inform your thinking, not lead it. Only you can decide the best place for your money, and any decision you make will put your money at risk. Information or data included here may have already been overtaken by events – and must be verified elsewhere – should you choose to act on it.

Last week I watched a video analysis of the S&P and Crude Oil markets. The technical analysis was right on at the time, but those markets have changed quite a bit in the last few days. The S&P had a huge rally and Crude seemed to steady out, so what’s the new analysis? Glad you asked!

Below are two free videos, one on Crude Oil and one on the S&P, that gives us an indepth technical look into these markets. Again the videos are free and very informatitive. Just Click on the Links Below…

Here’s your chance to analyze that stock you have been thinking about adding to your portfolio. Just enter the ticker of any company, name of a commodity, or forex pair and get your complimentary technical analysis. It cost you nothing and and no payment info will ever be requested.

Nothing in today’s post should be considered as an offer to buy or sell any securities or other investments; it is presented for informational purposes only. As a good investor, consult your Investment Advisor/s, Do Your Due Diligence, Read All Prospectus/s and related information carefully before you make any investing decisions and/or investments. –jschulmansr